The Legion of Super-Heroes Vol 2 #282
Continuing on with the re-reads of the classic Legion of Super-Heroes stories. This time out: The final part of the Superboy/Ultra Boy/Reflecto storyline, and a sort of one-sided battle with one of the Legion's greatest foes. Enjoy! :)
The Legion of Super-Heroes Vol 2 #282
December, 1981
"If Answers There Be..."
Plotter: Roy Thomas
Writer: Paul Levitz
Penciller: Jimmy Janes
Inker: Bruce Patterson
Letterer: Ben Oda
Colourist: Gene D'Angelo
Cover: Jim Aparo
Editor: Mike W. Barr
Mission Monitor Board:
Lightning Lad, Karate Kid, Blok, Phantom Girl, Dawnstar, Ultra Boy, Saturn Girl; Cosmic Boy, Sun Boy, Colossal Boy, Shadow Lass, Wildfire, Brainiac 5 (cameos); Element Lad, Mon-El, Brainiac 5 (flashbacks)
Guest Stars:
Superboy (rejoins the LSH); Lana Lang/Insect Queen; Reflecto (flashback)
Supporting Cast:
Police Chief Parker
Opposition:
The U.S. Army (sort of); The Time Trapper; Dirigible Dictator
Synopsis:
In a Smallville jail, Blok, Karate Kid, Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl are being held by the U.S. Army led by Major Crowell, having obtained some high-tech restraining devices from NASA. Smallville Police Chief Parker is present, and he tells Lightning Lad and Major Crowell that he doesn't believe Superboy or the Legionnaires are guilty of the crimes they're accused of, but that he can't overrule the Federal government until and unless Superboy explains why he sabotaged the Army's recent nuclear test. Lightning Lad is worried about his wife, but Crowell tells him she's in another cell down the hall. Major Crowell says that he and the others aren't going anywhere soon, but Lightning Lad promises him that they will.
Elsewhen, the Time Trapper gloats that his plan has worked even better than expected, as not only has he stranded the Legion leader and his companions in the past, but it seems that Phantom Girl, Dawnstar and Superboy are also missing and presumed dead, as no one has seen them since the explosion of the Molecule Master.
However, Phantom Girl and her two companions are not dead, as she has used her phasing power to bring Superboy and Dawnstar back to Bgztl in the 20th Century. On Bgztl, Phantom Girl and her teammates materialize. However, this era was before the Bgztlians realized that they had phasing powers, so the Legionnaires' sudden appearance surprises everyone, as well as Phantom Girl. Superboy finally recovers consciousness and is very confused as to what's going on, as Ultra Boy's consciousness appears to have disappeared from Superboy's body during the intra-diemensional travel. Phantom Girl is extremely distressed at this, but she recovers enough so that she and Dawnstar explain to him what has been happening with his body over the past few days. He does remember lifting the atomic bomb from the test into the air, but he can't remember why.
Alerted by his super-hearing about the fear that many of the natives are feeling, Superboy and the others are surprised when they witness a dirigible vessel attacking another, much larger dirigible (presumably a cargo ship or transport of some sort). Superboy tells the others that he has heard screams about the Dirigible Dictator, and saying that he hates dictators in any era, proceeds to launch himself skyward and disables the pirate vessel. Phantom Girl enters the vessel and takes out its crew, while outside, Dawnstar disables the ship's guns and the gunnery crew. After having landed the attack vessel, Superboy lectures the captive crew for a few moments, but Phantom Girl reminds him and Dawnstar that they don't belong in this time period, and that Bgztl became a good, decent world in 2981 A.D. without their help. Superboy is concerned with heading back to Earth and freeing the Legionnaires and then dealing with the Time Trapper, and Phantom Girl says they don't think they should try to find Ultra Boy or his body. Dawnstar disgrees, saying she thinks they should pursue the path of Jo Nah and says she believes she even knows where to look.
Phantom Girl leads Superboy and Dawnstar back into intra-dimensional space for the return to 20th Century Earth, and Dawnstar is able to pick up the scent of the trail and leads them uneeringly to Ultra Boy! He is trapped between dimensions, in some sort of force field.
Back in Smallville, Lana Lang attempts to gain entry at the jail to see the captive Legionnaires, but the army personnel stationed outside deny her. Changing into her Insect Queen identity and switching into a giant bee, she tries to gain entry to the jail, but fails. She's forced to sting the two sentries outside to sleep with her venom, when they start firing their weapons at her. Changing into the form of a Black Widow spider, she traps some more soldiers in a spider web.
Inside the jail, Lightning Lad is losing it somewhat, calling out to Saturn Girl, begging her to wake up as she's the only one who can get them out of this, the 20th Century types not even believing in telepathy and mental powers. Imra remains unconscious in her cell.
In intra-dimensional space, unable to move, but alive, Ultra Boy begins to explain to Superboy and Phantom Girl how he survived, while Dawnstar continues on Earthward in order to get some help. Ultra Boy says that the power crystal explosion on New Tartuga reacted with his invulnerability and sent him back in time. When he couldn't contact any of the Legionnaires, he willed himself back to Smallville to try and contact Superboy. When he couldn't communicate with the Teen of Steel either, he screamed out in frustration. This, coupled with the Legion telepathic communication ear-plug he still had, somehow caused him to be mentally super-imposed over Superboy's mind, taking over Kal-El's body. Ultra Boy in Superboy's body wanted to "break free," so he harnessed the power of the atomic bomb during the army test in the hopes it would "kick him out." It didn't work, of course, but now that he had a body, he decided to go back to the 30th Century. However, because he was in Superboy's body, as soon as he appeared in the future, Saturn Girl's mental block that she imposed after the business of the Psycho-Warrior asserted itself, erasing all of Superboy and Ultra Boy's combined memories. Even more confused, he took on a new guise as Reflecto. The Legionnaires know the rest of the story. Ultra Boy now feels he's running out of time, and is glad that he was able to make one last ditch effort to contact them while they passed through the intra-dimensional limbo. Superboy says that he thinks Ultra Boy had the right idea about harnessing atomic power. He decides to recreate an atomic explosion in the intra-dimensional space, as there's plenty of radioactive rocks in the space they occupy, in order to free Ultra Boy from his present, phantom state.
Back in Smallville, Lana Lang's Insect Queen is in deep trouble, the U.S. Army soldiers having employed netting to capture the now bee form heroine once more. As she's about to be captured, Ultra Boy arrives and deals with the soldiers. Inside the jail, Phantom Girl awakens Saturn Girl using sal ammonia she found in the jail's first aid kit, and then she and Superboy free the other Legionnaires from their captivity. The Legionnaires thank Lana for her help, and then head back to the future, side-stepping the Time Trapper's temporal block by going to 20th Century Bgztl first.
At his base of operations, the Legionnaires surprise the Time Trapper before he is able to blast them with a time-ray. Phantom Girl phases through the building's structure, and strikes the time-ray from below, re-directing it at the Time Trapper himself, who vanishes. The Legionnaires mull over the fact that it couldn't have been that easy to take out the Time Trapper, but Lightning Lad says he's certain that they haven't heard the last of the Trapper and that he'll be back "from oblivion" somehow and probably sooner rather than later.
Back in their own time, at Legion Headquarters, Saturn Girl erases the entire set of memories Superboy has about the adventure with the Psycho-Warrior, allowing him to forget that he knows how and when his foster parents will die. Rejoining the Legion, Superboy then returns back to Smallville in order to clear his name with the U.S. Army.
After Superboy leaves, the Legionnaires show Ultra Boy the statue of Reflecto in the Hall of Heroes. It had been a statue of Ultra Boy for when they thought he was dead, but they have modified it into one of Reflecto. Ultra Boy and Phantom Girl are more interested in re-connecting together, however, and the two fly off for a few days of rest and relaxation.
Commentary:
And so the Ultra Boy/Superboy/Reflecto story comes to a close. After more than six months of build-up and obfuscation, this issue attempts to close the story out, and explain why the Legion thought that Ultra Boy was dead, then why Superboy thought he was Ultra Boy, and why Ultra Boy as Superboy thought he was Reflecto. Did the story pay off? That depends on who you ask. In my case, the final "episode" of the story was certainly entertaining but it had some holes and inadequacies to it, though it also had some lovely moments to it.
In many ways, I'm not sure why this story and plotline were approved by incoming editor Mike W. Barr. The Legion thinking Ultra Boy was dead is not a bad idea, and actually pretty good as a springboard for various plots and the like. It wasn't a bad idea for Reflecto to be Superboy. However, when it comes to the whole mind-swapping and time travelling and mixed up identities that the plot threw at the readers, it was a bit...preposterous. This issue had revelations aplenty and certainly did provide answers, but... The idea of Ultra Boy screaming at Superboy, both mentally and physically, causing Ultra Boy to super-impose his mind over Superboy's is a bit too much. Even if given the amplification of the telepathic ear plugs that Legionnaires wear. The question is whether Ultra Boy should still have been wearing his when he was part of Captain Frake's space pirate band for several issues. There was really no explanation given for why Superboy/Ultra Boy created the character(ization) of Reflecto. If he was serious about hiding his identity, why didn't he (Reflecto) actually wear a proper mask as was depicted in The Legion of Super-Heroes Vol 2 #279? And the inconsistency in that regard this issue, where Ultra Boy says and is shown dying his actual costume and hair and ageing his face a bit too much inconsistency on the part of editor Mike W. Barr, who should have noticed this.
Paul Levitz's script this issue, based on Roy Thomas's plot, is pretty good and snazzy, but lacks that *something* that Levitz usually brings to his writing. There was some very good stuff in the story as well. The Dirigible Dictator storyline was a pretty decent one, though the villain himself is never seen. The recovered Superboy's lecture to the villain's henchmen was also pretty good, and fit the Teen of Steel very nicely as well. The return of Lana Lang's Insect Queen to the Legion canon was very nice, and I liked how her doubts about being a super-heroine were handled and where she admits she's "not very good at this super-hero business." Ultra Boy's explanation for what has been happening with him took 6 pages or so, and I felt it was a bit lengthy, but given the six-month payoff this had to deliver, it made sense to be this involved. Garth's losing it in the jail cell with worry over Imra's condition was very fitting but seems to be giving the character a feeling of emotional overload to me. I have to wonder if that's part of why he's resigning as Legion leader. And finally, there's the re-kindled heat of the relationship between Tinya and Jo when he is finally freed from the intra-dimensional prison his powers seem to have put him in. Oh, and both Superboy and Ultra Boy are back in the Legion. (Though I hope that the former doesn't become the "star" of the series again.)
There are some questions that can be raised here, though. How does Lightning Lad know Chief Parker's name? I guess it could be because the Major mentions it moments earlier, but Lightning Lad said it matter-of-factly and in a very friendly way, indicating prior knowledge of the character. Why doesn't Karate Kid break out of the jail?, since no 20th Century restraints should be able to keep him prisoner if he doesn't want to be. On the same subject, why and how does NASA have equipment that can hold Lightning Lad's powers in check and keep Blok imprisoned in a block of...whatever that was? Why didn't Saturn Girl wake up and help her fellow Legionnaires escape earlier? The reasons for all of this is that they had to stay locked up for the sake of the story - because this was Ultra Boy's story, not theirs. Still, that's lazy plotting (and is wholly on Roy Thomas's plate).
If there's a real let-down with the story, it's the final confrontation with the Time Trapper. While the Legionnaires find a way to beat his keeping them on 20th Century Earth, unable to reach their own time (see more on this below), is an interesting twist, the final battle with the Time Trapper takes all of one panel and one Legionnaire. Phantom Girl aims the time-ray at the villain, defeating him very easily, though like Saturn Girl, I don't believe it. This should have been at least an 8-page fight between the Legionnaires and the Trapper. This is not the all-powerful Time Trapper Legion fans have come to know and love, and I truly hope his next appearance is more satisfying and has a deadlier tone to it.
The biggest issue (and perhaps that's not the right term for this) is how Roy Thomas and Paul Levitz handled the Earth-Bgztl relationship here. I've always thought that Phantom Girl's homeworld existed on a separate plane that she could reach through turning intangible, not similar to the Earth-1 and Earth-2 business of classic DC Comics lore. So I didn't expect there to be a "limbo" or whatever you want to call it between them. However, in this story, there appears to be both space and distance in between them. (I seem to remember that Roy Thomas created a similar "limbo" between Earths -1 and -2 in Justice League of America Vol 1 #220, so...) Anyway, just consider me confused in this regard. Perhaps we'll learn more about Bgztl and its relationship to Earth sooner rather than later.
From an art point of view, this issue was pretty good. Jimmy Janes does a lovely pencilling job this time out, playing to his strengths. There are at least three pages with poster-like panels (especially the one at the top of page 11 and the one on page 12) that show off Janes's ability to draw characters rather than emotion or action. Bruce Patterson's inks complement Janes's pencils really well, and everyone looks really handsome or beautiful here. This was Jimmy Janes's last work pencilling the Legion. He basically retired from comics after this story, never taking on another series at either DC or Marvel.
Overall, the wrap-up to this very long storyline was satisfying for the most part, but there were a few elements to the tale that were inconsistent. The story pretty much closed the plot elements that had been open for the past six months, and raised a few more questions. The disappointing "dispatching" of the Time Trapper seriously let the story down after the hints and what had come before it, but at least Tinya has got her Jo back.
Final Notes:
This issue wraps up the Ultra Boy/Superboy/Reflecto story once and for all...
This issue features the first of two Legion covers that Jim Aparo drew for the comic series...
On page 2, Blok refers to the Major holding the Legionnaires captive as Major Crowell. In the previous issue, the character was actually Major Crawford...
Karate Kid references the time he spent in the post-Viet Nam America period of history. This refers largely to his adventures in Karate Kid Vol 1 #1-15...
The Smallville sequences in the stories must occur sometime between 1964 and 1968, as Karate Kid mentions that people have not turned against the Viet Nam War yet and later, Superboy makes mentions of the Beatles...
Lana Lang earned her Honourary membership in the Legion of Super-Heroes as Insect Queen way back in Adventure Comics Vol 1 #356...
When Ultra Boy is explaining taking on the guise of Reflecto, there's a glaring mistake. During Reflecto's unmasking in The Legion of Super-Heroes Vol 2 #279, he is wearing a mask (as per Mission: Impossible) and a uniform over his Superboy costume. However here, Superboy is shown dying his actual costume and dying his hair and ageing his face somewhat...
Saturn Girl gave Superboy a hypnotic command to never return to the 30th Century, as he had learned there about his adopted parents' deaths. This occurred in their fight with the Psycho-Warrior in Legion of Super-Heroes Vol 2 #259...
The statue of Reflecto, that is actually the "dead" Ultra Boy's statue remodelled, has never appeared in any Hall of Heroes scene in the Legion comics after this issue...
This issue features the last work of penciller Jimmy Janes on the Legion. He retired from comics after this story, never taking on another series at either DC or Marvel...
In the Legion Outpost letter column this issue, a Special Announcement appears that opens up the election for new Legion leader and for the readers to vote. The deadline for the ballots to be received at the DC Comics' offices is December 1st (1981).
Next Issue: The Legion of Super-Heroes Vol 2 #283
The Legion of Super-Heroes Vol 2 #282
December, 1981
"If Answers There Be..."
Plotter: Roy Thomas
Writer: Paul Levitz
Penciller: Jimmy Janes
Inker: Bruce Patterson
Letterer: Ben Oda
Colourist: Gene D'Angelo
Cover: Jim Aparo
Editor: Mike W. Barr
Mission Monitor Board:
Lightning Lad, Karate Kid, Blok, Phantom Girl, Dawnstar, Ultra Boy, Saturn Girl; Cosmic Boy, Sun Boy, Colossal Boy, Shadow Lass, Wildfire, Brainiac 5 (cameos); Element Lad, Mon-El, Brainiac 5 (flashbacks)
Guest Stars:
Superboy (rejoins the LSH); Lana Lang/Insect Queen; Reflecto (flashback)
Supporting Cast:
Police Chief Parker
Opposition:
The U.S. Army (sort of); The Time Trapper; Dirigible Dictator
Synopsis:
In a Smallville jail, Blok, Karate Kid, Lightning Lad and Saturn Girl are being held by the U.S. Army led by Major Crowell, having obtained some high-tech restraining devices from NASA. Smallville Police Chief Parker is present, and he tells Lightning Lad and Major Crowell that he doesn't believe Superboy or the Legionnaires are guilty of the crimes they're accused of, but that he can't overrule the Federal government until and unless Superboy explains why he sabotaged the Army's recent nuclear test. Lightning Lad is worried about his wife, but Crowell tells him she's in another cell down the hall. Major Crowell says that he and the others aren't going anywhere soon, but Lightning Lad promises him that they will.
Elsewhen, the Time Trapper gloats that his plan has worked even better than expected, as not only has he stranded the Legion leader and his companions in the past, but it seems that Phantom Girl, Dawnstar and Superboy are also missing and presumed dead, as no one has seen them since the explosion of the Molecule Master.
However, Phantom Girl and her two companions are not dead, as she has used her phasing power to bring Superboy and Dawnstar back to Bgztl in the 20th Century. On Bgztl, Phantom Girl and her teammates materialize. However, this era was before the Bgztlians realized that they had phasing powers, so the Legionnaires' sudden appearance surprises everyone, as well as Phantom Girl. Superboy finally recovers consciousness and is very confused as to what's going on, as Ultra Boy's consciousness appears to have disappeared from Superboy's body during the intra-diemensional travel. Phantom Girl is extremely distressed at this, but she recovers enough so that she and Dawnstar explain to him what has been happening with his body over the past few days. He does remember lifting the atomic bomb from the test into the air, but he can't remember why.
Alerted by his super-hearing about the fear that many of the natives are feeling, Superboy and the others are surprised when they witness a dirigible vessel attacking another, much larger dirigible (presumably a cargo ship or transport of some sort). Superboy tells the others that he has heard screams about the Dirigible Dictator, and saying that he hates dictators in any era, proceeds to launch himself skyward and disables the pirate vessel. Phantom Girl enters the vessel and takes out its crew, while outside, Dawnstar disables the ship's guns and the gunnery crew. After having landed the attack vessel, Superboy lectures the captive crew for a few moments, but Phantom Girl reminds him and Dawnstar that they don't belong in this time period, and that Bgztl became a good, decent world in 2981 A.D. without their help. Superboy is concerned with heading back to Earth and freeing the Legionnaires and then dealing with the Time Trapper, and Phantom Girl says they don't think they should try to find Ultra Boy or his body. Dawnstar disgrees, saying she thinks they should pursue the path of Jo Nah and says she believes she even knows where to look.
Phantom Girl leads Superboy and Dawnstar back into intra-dimensional space for the return to 20th Century Earth, and Dawnstar is able to pick up the scent of the trail and leads them uneeringly to Ultra Boy! He is trapped between dimensions, in some sort of force field.
Back in Smallville, Lana Lang attempts to gain entry at the jail to see the captive Legionnaires, but the army personnel stationed outside deny her. Changing into her Insect Queen identity and switching into a giant bee, she tries to gain entry to the jail, but fails. She's forced to sting the two sentries outside to sleep with her venom, when they start firing their weapons at her. Changing into the form of a Black Widow spider, she traps some more soldiers in a spider web.
Inside the jail, Lightning Lad is losing it somewhat, calling out to Saturn Girl, begging her to wake up as she's the only one who can get them out of this, the 20th Century types not even believing in telepathy and mental powers. Imra remains unconscious in her cell.
In intra-dimensional space, unable to move, but alive, Ultra Boy begins to explain to Superboy and Phantom Girl how he survived, while Dawnstar continues on Earthward in order to get some help. Ultra Boy says that the power crystal explosion on New Tartuga reacted with his invulnerability and sent him back in time. When he couldn't contact any of the Legionnaires, he willed himself back to Smallville to try and contact Superboy. When he couldn't communicate with the Teen of Steel either, he screamed out in frustration. This, coupled with the Legion telepathic communication ear-plug he still had, somehow caused him to be mentally super-imposed over Superboy's mind, taking over Kal-El's body. Ultra Boy in Superboy's body wanted to "break free," so he harnessed the power of the atomic bomb during the army test in the hopes it would "kick him out." It didn't work, of course, but now that he had a body, he decided to go back to the 30th Century. However, because he was in Superboy's body, as soon as he appeared in the future, Saturn Girl's mental block that she imposed after the business of the Psycho-Warrior asserted itself, erasing all of Superboy and Ultra Boy's combined memories. Even more confused, he took on a new guise as Reflecto. The Legionnaires know the rest of the story. Ultra Boy now feels he's running out of time, and is glad that he was able to make one last ditch effort to contact them while they passed through the intra-dimensional limbo. Superboy says that he thinks Ultra Boy had the right idea about harnessing atomic power. He decides to recreate an atomic explosion in the intra-dimensional space, as there's plenty of radioactive rocks in the space they occupy, in order to free Ultra Boy from his present, phantom state.
Back in Smallville, Lana Lang's Insect Queen is in deep trouble, the U.S. Army soldiers having employed netting to capture the now bee form heroine once more. As she's about to be captured, Ultra Boy arrives and deals with the soldiers. Inside the jail, Phantom Girl awakens Saturn Girl using sal ammonia she found in the jail's first aid kit, and then she and Superboy free the other Legionnaires from their captivity. The Legionnaires thank Lana for her help, and then head back to the future, side-stepping the Time Trapper's temporal block by going to 20th Century Bgztl first.
At his base of operations, the Legionnaires surprise the Time Trapper before he is able to blast them with a time-ray. Phantom Girl phases through the building's structure, and strikes the time-ray from below, re-directing it at the Time Trapper himself, who vanishes. The Legionnaires mull over the fact that it couldn't have been that easy to take out the Time Trapper, but Lightning Lad says he's certain that they haven't heard the last of the Trapper and that he'll be back "from oblivion" somehow and probably sooner rather than later.
Back in their own time, at Legion Headquarters, Saturn Girl erases the entire set of memories Superboy has about the adventure with the Psycho-Warrior, allowing him to forget that he knows how and when his foster parents will die. Rejoining the Legion, Superboy then returns back to Smallville in order to clear his name with the U.S. Army.
After Superboy leaves, the Legionnaires show Ultra Boy the statue of Reflecto in the Hall of Heroes. It had been a statue of Ultra Boy for when they thought he was dead, but they have modified it into one of Reflecto. Ultra Boy and Phantom Girl are more interested in re-connecting together, however, and the two fly off for a few days of rest and relaxation.
Commentary:
And so the Ultra Boy/Superboy/Reflecto story comes to a close. After more than six months of build-up and obfuscation, this issue attempts to close the story out, and explain why the Legion thought that Ultra Boy was dead, then why Superboy thought he was Ultra Boy, and why Ultra Boy as Superboy thought he was Reflecto. Did the story pay off? That depends on who you ask. In my case, the final "episode" of the story was certainly entertaining but it had some holes and inadequacies to it, though it also had some lovely moments to it.
In many ways, I'm not sure why this story and plotline were approved by incoming editor Mike W. Barr. The Legion thinking Ultra Boy was dead is not a bad idea, and actually pretty good as a springboard for various plots and the like. It wasn't a bad idea for Reflecto to be Superboy. However, when it comes to the whole mind-swapping and time travelling and mixed up identities that the plot threw at the readers, it was a bit...preposterous. This issue had revelations aplenty and certainly did provide answers, but... The idea of Ultra Boy screaming at Superboy, both mentally and physically, causing Ultra Boy to super-impose his mind over Superboy's is a bit too much. Even if given the amplification of the telepathic ear plugs that Legionnaires wear. The question is whether Ultra Boy should still have been wearing his when he was part of Captain Frake's space pirate band for several issues. There was really no explanation given for why Superboy/Ultra Boy created the character(ization) of Reflecto. If he was serious about hiding his identity, why didn't he (Reflecto) actually wear a proper mask as was depicted in The Legion of Super-Heroes Vol 2 #279? And the inconsistency in that regard this issue, where Ultra Boy says and is shown dying his actual costume and hair and ageing his face a bit too much inconsistency on the part of editor Mike W. Barr, who should have noticed this.
Paul Levitz's script this issue, based on Roy Thomas's plot, is pretty good and snazzy, but lacks that *something* that Levitz usually brings to his writing. There was some very good stuff in the story as well. The Dirigible Dictator storyline was a pretty decent one, though the villain himself is never seen. The recovered Superboy's lecture to the villain's henchmen was also pretty good, and fit the Teen of Steel very nicely as well. The return of Lana Lang's Insect Queen to the Legion canon was very nice, and I liked how her doubts about being a super-heroine were handled and where she admits she's "not very good at this super-hero business." Ultra Boy's explanation for what has been happening with him took 6 pages or so, and I felt it was a bit lengthy, but given the six-month payoff this had to deliver, it made sense to be this involved. Garth's losing it in the jail cell with worry over Imra's condition was very fitting but seems to be giving the character a feeling of emotional overload to me. I have to wonder if that's part of why he's resigning as Legion leader. And finally, there's the re-kindled heat of the relationship between Tinya and Jo when he is finally freed from the intra-dimensional prison his powers seem to have put him in. Oh, and both Superboy and Ultra Boy are back in the Legion. (Though I hope that the former doesn't become the "star" of the series again.)
There are some questions that can be raised here, though. How does Lightning Lad know Chief Parker's name? I guess it could be because the Major mentions it moments earlier, but Lightning Lad said it matter-of-factly and in a very friendly way, indicating prior knowledge of the character. Why doesn't Karate Kid break out of the jail?, since no 20th Century restraints should be able to keep him prisoner if he doesn't want to be. On the same subject, why and how does NASA have equipment that can hold Lightning Lad's powers in check and keep Blok imprisoned in a block of...whatever that was? Why didn't Saturn Girl wake up and help her fellow Legionnaires escape earlier? The reasons for all of this is that they had to stay locked up for the sake of the story - because this was Ultra Boy's story, not theirs. Still, that's lazy plotting (and is wholly on Roy Thomas's plate).
If there's a real let-down with the story, it's the final confrontation with the Time Trapper. While the Legionnaires find a way to beat his keeping them on 20th Century Earth, unable to reach their own time (see more on this below), is an interesting twist, the final battle with the Time Trapper takes all of one panel and one Legionnaire. Phantom Girl aims the time-ray at the villain, defeating him very easily, though like Saturn Girl, I don't believe it. This should have been at least an 8-page fight between the Legionnaires and the Trapper. This is not the all-powerful Time Trapper Legion fans have come to know and love, and I truly hope his next appearance is more satisfying and has a deadlier tone to it.
The biggest issue (and perhaps that's not the right term for this) is how Roy Thomas and Paul Levitz handled the Earth-Bgztl relationship here. I've always thought that Phantom Girl's homeworld existed on a separate plane that she could reach through turning intangible, not similar to the Earth-1 and Earth-2 business of classic DC Comics lore. So I didn't expect there to be a "limbo" or whatever you want to call it between them. However, in this story, there appears to be both space and distance in between them. (I seem to remember that Roy Thomas created a similar "limbo" between Earths -1 and -2 in Justice League of America Vol 1 #220, so...) Anyway, just consider me confused in this regard. Perhaps we'll learn more about Bgztl and its relationship to Earth sooner rather than later.
From an art point of view, this issue was pretty good. Jimmy Janes does a lovely pencilling job this time out, playing to his strengths. There are at least three pages with poster-like panels (especially the one at the top of page 11 and the one on page 12) that show off Janes's ability to draw characters rather than emotion or action. Bruce Patterson's inks complement Janes's pencils really well, and everyone looks really handsome or beautiful here. This was Jimmy Janes's last work pencilling the Legion. He basically retired from comics after this story, never taking on another series at either DC or Marvel.
Overall, the wrap-up to this very long storyline was satisfying for the most part, but there were a few elements to the tale that were inconsistent. The story pretty much closed the plot elements that had been open for the past six months, and raised a few more questions. The disappointing "dispatching" of the Time Trapper seriously let the story down after the hints and what had come before it, but at least Tinya has got her Jo back.
Final Notes:
This issue wraps up the Ultra Boy/Superboy/Reflecto story once and for all...
This issue features the first of two Legion covers that Jim Aparo drew for the comic series...
On page 2, Blok refers to the Major holding the Legionnaires captive as Major Crowell. In the previous issue, the character was actually Major Crawford...
Karate Kid references the time he spent in the post-Viet Nam America period of history. This refers largely to his adventures in Karate Kid Vol 1 #1-15...
The Smallville sequences in the stories must occur sometime between 1964 and 1968, as Karate Kid mentions that people have not turned against the Viet Nam War yet and later, Superboy makes mentions of the Beatles...
Lana Lang earned her Honourary membership in the Legion of Super-Heroes as Insect Queen way back in Adventure Comics Vol 1 #356...
When Ultra Boy is explaining taking on the guise of Reflecto, there's a glaring mistake. During Reflecto's unmasking in The Legion of Super-Heroes Vol 2 #279, he is wearing a mask (as per Mission: Impossible) and a uniform over his Superboy costume. However here, Superboy is shown dying his actual costume and dying his hair and ageing his face somewhat...
Saturn Girl gave Superboy a hypnotic command to never return to the 30th Century, as he had learned there about his adopted parents' deaths. This occurred in their fight with the Psycho-Warrior in Legion of Super-Heroes Vol 2 #259...
The statue of Reflecto, that is actually the "dead" Ultra Boy's statue remodelled, has never appeared in any Hall of Heroes scene in the Legion comics after this issue...
This issue features the last work of penciller Jimmy Janes on the Legion. He retired from comics after this story, never taking on another series at either DC or Marvel...
In the Legion Outpost letter column this issue, a Special Announcement appears that opens up the election for new Legion leader and for the readers to vote. The deadline for the ballots to be received at the DC Comics' offices is December 1st (1981).
Next Issue: The Legion of Super-Heroes Vol 2 #283